Friday, April 20, 2012

New Titles For The twocavs

Our Q drought is over. To be fair we haven't run a full trial since November and it's clear that the one run a day I did in January and February didn't give my dogs a chance to get comfortable. Last weekend I was so proud of both of them. Rylie earned his Agility Dog of Canada with two standard Q's and Max earned his Advanced Agiility Dog of Canada also with two standard Q's. Max and I have had to work through teeter issues, contact issues and the mama getting used to advanced courses issues.

We started both days at a really disgusting hour of the morning so we could get to the trial for Rylie and I to run steeplechase. The idea being to give him a chance to burn some excess energy. It was a really good strategy I just wish it didn't mean getting up so early. Rylie ran really well - we didn't Q but I used the runs to reinforce contact criteria. By the time his standard run came up his contacts were lovely. He ran his first ever snooker run on Saturday and amazed me by staying with me like a champ.

The advanced gamble run was lovely for both dogs - both got the mini gamble twice and racked up a ton of points. The main gamble was a bit too hard for their current skill level - we haven't worked a lot on distance work. I was really pleased with both of them though.

Max had a lovely, fast, standard run to earn a Q. He ran really nicely in his snooker but a handling error on my part caused us to get whistled off just short of the required amount of points.

The courses Sunday seemed more difficult to me. Again Rylie ran beautifully in his standard run - that was his title run. The Advanced standard looked really hard but the fact that Max started very slowly actually helped because I had time to handle the tricky bits and that gave him his title.

The first master jumpers run was REALLY tricky. Unfortunately that was the one I had entered Rylie in for his first ever Master jumpers. The first three obstacles were great but then he got into a tunnel jump tunnel loop that I couldn't pull him out of. Max and I fared only slightly better but he did run well and got a Q in the second jumpers class.

We have things to work on- Max is not fast off the start line so keeping his attention and having him blast off is one of my main goals for him.

For Rylie I know that maintaining contact criteria will always be a work in progress.

I want to start working a bit more distance work with both dogs - particularly with distractions.